


It snows, sometimes

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: 2016 Christmas Fics [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9084730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: She holds herself that little bit apart, but Gendry's patient. He learned it at the forge.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tywinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/gifts).



> For [kieraembers,](http://kieraembers.tumblr.com/) via me, from [Lauren.](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com)

“It’s a cold world on your own,” he says, and she sets her jaw hard. Doesn’t she know how hard the world is for anyone alone? Doesn’t she know better than he does? Him that has never been really alone in all his life?

“Don’t try to tell me about cold,” she says, tucking her scarf into her belt and tugging up her hood - the wind is rising, biting deep on its way down from the far north - without looking at him. “I’m a Stark. I know cold better than  _ you.” _

“Might be that you do,” he says. “But there’s a difference between knowing a thing and feeling it - I think you Northerners’ve trained yourselves as to not feel the cold. Doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  
  


* * *

It snows, sometimes, this close to the Neck. 

Oh, they’re still in the Riverlands - there’s more that need helping here than there are above in the North, and that’s what matters. The war might be over, might have been over nearer five years than four, but there’s still children with no parents, parents with no children, and a whole world left scarred and hurting by all that went before.

Her uncle - she doesn’t visit him often, and never brings anyone along when she does - funds most of their efforts with gold from his new holding, over toward the west, and seems a decent sort. Still, he does his best to help where he can, from the top down and from wherever they are up. 

Even after all they’ve seen and endured, there’s still far too few willing to try for  _ decent,  _ much less good. 

She does, though. She works as hard at being good as he works at the forge, him and his little gang - armourers and smiths and farriers all working together, with two anvils and four stoves between them. They make a good enough living, but put the money into training more boys, and a few girls, as smiths and carpenters and whatever else is needed. 

She never trains anyone. Says no one needs to learn the skills she learned between disappearing and coming back. She learns as much as she can, though, picking up a little carpentry here and a little goldworking there, and all the healing arts anyone will teach her.

She  _ teaches,  _ sometimes. Numbers and letters to anyone that wants them, and sewing and stitching too. Her stitches aren’t pretty but they’re functional, and no one sewing with a bone needle and heavy thread cares much about  _ pretty,  _ anyway.

She still holds herself apart, though. Keeps that little step away and doesn’t let them close. He wonders what it is he’ll have to do to get in close, as he was such a long time ago.

 

* * *

Whole lifetimes pass before she lets herself think of him as  _ Gendry.  _ It’s hard to let anyone so close as that, even her found-once-more family, but he works so slowly, as he would at a fine new breastplate, that he slips past her guard without her even noticing.

“Arya,” he says, passing her a bowl of porridge when she sits down by the pot. “Sleep well?”

“Better,” she admits, and pretends not to notice him smiling.


End file.
